even if every one of the parents were heckled heckled heckled every morning while they ate their breakfast burritos that wouldn’t lend any moral or logical support to propaganda slut piers morgan’s gruesome and shameful and unending attempots to exploit their dead dead babies to hysterically attack the constitutional rights of americans like me

Speaking of commercials, Nanny Bloomberg’s pac just made a huge investment in a skeevy ad about gun control to try to influence the Il special election to replace disgraced congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. Bear in mind that the ad was cut specifically to demonize a female Democrat in an all Democrat field for having ties to the NRA.

Every so often, a cherished myth of the Left’s historical narrative comes apart. That is why keeping the flame alive by repeating the myths gives sustenance to the Left’s chosen causes. I learned this the hard way when I wrote The Rosenberg File with Joyce Milton in 1983.

To the Left, it was imperative that the Rosenbergs — who were found guilty of “conspiracy to commit espionage” and sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman after the trial — be innocent. If they were not, it would mean that they were not martyrs for peace, arrested and tried for their “progressive” and anti-war politics and their opposition to the impending fascism and anti-Soviet hysteria of the Truman administration. Rather, if actually guilty, it would mean that the United States had a right to protect itself against those who were working on behalf of the Soviet Union by seeking to ferret out atomic secrets on behalf of Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical regime.

To acknowledge the truth, in other words, meant that those on the Left would have to question their most cherished beliefs.

When the book came out, it was only thirty years after the Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing prison, and many of those who fought on their behalf were still around and active. Thus they engaged in a massive campaign to discredit our findings and to smear us as tools of the FBI and the Reagan administration, which they charged was trying once again to undermine the cause of peace and to seek war with the still existing Soviet Union.

…Imagine Messer-Kruse’s shock when his own careful scholarly examination of Haymarket revealed that most of what the Left taught about the event was based on both shoddy scholarship and ideological wish-fulfillment.

…What next occurred paralleled directly my own experience after publication of The Rosenberg File. Much to his surprise and consternation, Messer-Kruse was confronted by others’ “utter and complete denial of the evidence.”

I could have told him that he would get that response. I received calls from former friends telling me: “We need the Rosenbergs to be innocent.” “You have betrayed the movement and all of us.” “Even if they were spies, you should not have written the book.” One person even offered to host a Chinese Communist-style rectification session at which I could atone and take back what I wrote.

…Messer-Kruse’s response to all this was precisely the one that I had. He said:

We have an obligation to represent as best as we can the objective reality of the past.

Reading his words, I had to suppress a laugh. How quaint — a historian, although one on the political Left, believes he has a commitment to truth about the past, a commitment that stands above serving the needs of a political movement. Doesn’t he know, as one of my old comrades in the social-democratic movement told me at the time: “We’re trying to recruit former Communists into our movement (Michael Harrington’s group) and your book will hinder our effort. You shouldn’t have written it”?

After all, truth is relative. We are supposed to do what serves the class struggle and the movement; the truth is what serves the movement’s ends, and is not objective.

Intriguing that Latell’s recent book, punctured the pretense that Oswald was such a patsy, as it indicated the Cuban DGI’s awareness of the assasination before hand, and suggested one of those peddling that other conspiracy, was at best
peddling an incomplete tale,

47. Apparently it was heckling because the question should have been considered purely rhetorical.

The guy made it pretty obvious that his question wasn’t rhetorical when he asked once, waited for an answer, then restated the question in a way that made it clear he was taking the fact that no one had answered him as meaning no one could answer him. Up until that point it appears everyone in the room thought his question was rhetorical.

The real problem is they didn’t have a good answer. I gave 5 answers above.

Comment by Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 1/30/2013 @ 4:41 pm

I think the best answer as to why someone needs an AR with a high-cap magazine would be just in case Sen. Menendez showed up in town in company with a Secret Service detail, and you have a couple of Dominican or Colombian girls staying with your family as high school exchange students.

Apparently the FBI has released some emails; Gateway Pundit links to another site that has screenshots of them. The agent was communicating with the guy who blew the whistle on Menendez. Probably the guy who found the hookers and got them to talk on tape in the first place.

I’ll just quote part of the emails:

I am an agent with the FBI and I work cases involving crimes against children.

…As far as the information you have provided, we have been able to confirm most of it. We know you are providing accurate information and that is why it is imperative that we meet in person…

…I would not like the information you have to get stale and lose the opportunity to bring the people who have abused these young ladies to justice.

Naturally it’s only a local story; the national media is following “ethics standard b.” Ethics standards A is used when it’s a Republican. That’s when they can’t wait to verify facts because otherwise they might lose the scoop (it’s also used when they think someone who might be a TEA Party member committed an act of violence as was the case when ABC(?) identified the wrong guy as the Aurora CO theater shooter).

Ethics standard B is of course applied when the story concerns a Democrat. Then they’re serious journalists who have to verify the facts before irresponsibly printing something that might be wrong. That’s what distinguishes them from those silly bloggers, you know. All those editors; layers of fact checkers.

TRENTON — U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez did not pay for two flights provided by Salomon Melgen — his friend and campaign donor whose office was raided by the FBI on Tuesday night — until more than two years later, and after a New Jersey Republican asked the Senate ethics committee to look into his travels.

Menendez spokesman Paul Brubaker today said the senator reimbursed Melgen for the flights on Melgen’s private jet until Jan. 4 of this year.

Question for the legal eagles; if you wait until after you become aware you’ve been found out because the FBI opened an investigation into your illegal Dominican activities, and someone also filed an ethics complaint regarding same with the Senate, before paying for what constitutes an illegal gift, do they and a federal prosecutor see that as anything more than an admission of guilt? I’m not asking about the Senate ethics committee as that term is an oxymoron. Just the legal question.

On Nov. 3 of last year, state Sen. Sam Thompson, who chairs the Middlesex County Republican Committee, wrote to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to request an investigation of Menendez’s flights to the Caribbean nation. Thompson’s letter came after a conservative blog posted allegations from two anonymous women it said were prostitutes who said they had sex with Menendez in the Dominican Republic.

“In the weeks that ensued, after that very extensive review which was a time consuming laborious project, the issue of these two trips came up, and the senator had basically consulted with the campaign’s legal counsel and found that he had two options,” said Brubaker. “Basically he could, according to Senate ethics rules, use an exemption under the personal friendship rule, or simply pay the reimbursements for the flights. In order to just demonstrate full compliance he decided to pay the reimbursement.”

No, you can’t claim an exemption under the personal friendship rule for anything valued over $250. To claim an exemption for anything of value over that amount you have to request written determination from the Senate ethics committee that the personal friendship exemption applies. Which Menendez clearly didn’t do. So that’s a very poor lie.

As is this:

Menenedez’s office said today that he took a total of three flights on Melgen’s plane. One of the flights, in May 2010, was a fundraising trip that was reimbursed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at the time.

Fundraising? In the Dominican Republic?

While, just coincidentally of course, Dominican sugar producers just may want to contribute, given the good Senator had to vote on a bill concerning sugar price supports and he could have either hurt or helped them. Most notably the brothers who own the Casa de Campo resort, which the Senator stayed 10 times during his six year term for a little fun in the sun and apparently some teen-aged frolic in the dark.

Naw, there’s no story here.

As Dingy Harry Reid, who accused Romney of being a tax cheat based upon some unnamed anonymous source, contemptuously observed consider the source. A conservative blog! It’s almost as bad as the National Enquirer breaking a sex scandal story involving a Democratic presidential candidate. Preposterous. No reputable news agency would touch it.